HIV/AIDS

"The scheduled launch of UNICEF’s Mother-Baby Pack in Kenya tomorrow marks the moment when this innovation for preventing mother-to-child HIV transmission begins to fulfil its potential to save lives in the developing world. The Mother-Baby Pack is a creative response to an unmet need. Every day, more than 1,000 infants worldwide are infected with HIV during pregnancy, labour, delivery or breastfeeding. Most are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Without medical help, at least half of these babies will die before their second birthday. But a medical and social intervention known as prevention of mother-to-child transmission, or PMTCT, can safeguard them from HIV – while protecting the health of their mothers.

The Mother-Baby Pack is a take-home box of PMTCT drugs designed for women and children who have no access to conventional, high-quality preventive care. It contains all the anti-retroviral drugs and antibiotics required to protect the health of one mother and child. The medicines are pre-measured and packaged to make it easy for adults to administer them correctly. Only pregnant women living with HIV who do not yet require treatment for their own health will receive Mother-Baby Packs."

"An adult-film performer tested positive for HIV last week, leading several production companies in Los Angeles County to halt filming indefinitely to contain a potential outbreak, the Los Angeles Times reports. The news is rattling a multi-billion dollar industry that routinely tests performers for the virus but does not require them to wear condoms."

"Some advocates at last week's international AIDS Conference greeted news of hte results of an HIV gel cooly, saying more was needed than a "medicalized" response to an epidemic that travels a social pathway of infringed women's rights.

Women continue to carry the weight of the HIV epidemic, numerous advocacy groups said, noting that the proportion of women infected with HIV has been rising.  Like many other women's advocates at the meeting, Bianco, an Argentinean feminist and member of Women ARISE, an international coalition of women's HIV networks, thinks women's problems negotiating safe sex and other HIV-AIDS preventions are intrinsically linked to the abrogation of their rights in other areas, such as land ownership, access to education and participation in politics.

Women still struggle to negotiate condom use, are vulnerable to sexual violence, often lack education and access to prevention information and when economically disadvantaged are more likely to use transactional sex or sex work to support themselves. All of these vulnerabilities heighten their risk of contracting HIV.

Part of the problem, according to a report published by UNIFEM at the conference, is that women are not included in the design and appraisal of HIV programs.  "Positive women, in particular, are actually not involved in the response in a meaningful way," said Nazneen Damji, co-author of the report. At best, women are involved "tokenistically or formally" but are not empowered to be in leadership or decision-making roles.  The report found a significant lack of documentation of women's participation as decision-makers in national and international HIV responses. One hundred women interviewed for the report cited barriers, including cultural factors and gender norms (79 percent) and economic disempowerment (58 percent) that prevented their full participation."

 "While the HIV/AIDS crisis has historically been associated with urban white gay men, the new emerging face of AIDS in America belongs to a Black woman. Health and Human Services reports, "AIDS is now the leading cause of death for African-American women ages 25-34. And African-American women are more than 21 times as likely to die from HIV/AIDS as non-Hispanic white women." Exposure to infection is typically through unprotected sex with men, but underlying factors may range from poverty and inadequate health care to the mass incarceration of Black men."

"The first test of a long-acting vaginal ring loaded with an HIV-preventing drug has begun enrolling women in southern Africa.

With no prospects for an AIDS vaccine in the next decade or longer, the AIDS community has high hopes for "microbicides," the general term for substances that kill viruses or bacteria on contact. None of the compounds tested to date, however, has worked, and one of them actually increased a woman's risk of becoming infected.

The new study is the 15th undertaken by the International Partnership for Microbicides, a nonprofit group in Silver Spring that has helped lead the search for a discreet, woman-controlled means of protection.

"This is the one that is most likely to work," Zeda Rosenberg, the head of the organization, said last week at Women Deliver 2010, an international conference on maternal and child health held in Washington.

Elizabeth Mataka, the United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, said she was "very excited about the prospect" of a long-acting microbicidal ring. She told reporters that its advantage is that "nobody needs to know, nobody needs to agree" when a woman uses it."